Governing the Female Body: Gender, Health, and Networks of Power

by Lori Reed (Editor), Paula Saukko (Editor)

Overview

A feminist and Foucauldian analysis of a variety of emerging gendered discourses.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781438429526
Publisher:	State University of New York Press
Publication date:	01/28/2010
Pages:	316
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.80(d)

About the Author

Lori Reed is an independent scholar living in Washington, DC. Paula Saukko is Senior Lecturer in Sociology at Loughborough University in the United Kingdom. She is the author of The Anorexic Self: A Personal, Political Analysis of a Diagnostic Discourse, also published by SUNY Press, and Doing Research in Cultural Studies: An Introduction to Classical and New Methodological Approaches.

Table of Contents

Introduction: Governing the Female Body: Three Dimensions of Power Paula Saukko Lori Reed 1

I Mediated Self-Health

1 "It's Down to You": Psychology, Magazine Culture, and Governing Female Bodies Lisa Blackman 19

2 Beyond Pill Scares? Online Discussions on Genetic Thrombophilia and Gendered Contradictions of Personalised Medicine Paula Saukko 40

3 Gender, Pathology, Spectacle: Internet Addiction and the Cultural Organization of "Healthy" Computer Use Lori Reed 59

2 Privatization and the Body Proper-TY

4 Pink Ribbons Inc.: The Emergence of Cause-Related Marketing and the Corporatization of the Breast Cancer Movement Samantha King 85

5 Regulation through the Postfeminist Pharmacy: Promotional Discourse and Menstruation Joshua Gunn Mary Douglas Vavrus 112

6 Productive Bodies: Women, Work, and Depression Kristin A. Swenson 134

III Transnational Body Politics

7 "The Pill" in Puerto Rico and the Mainland United States: Negotiating Discourses of Risk and Decolonization Laura Briggs 159

8 Biopolitical Media: Population, Communications International, and the Governing of Reproductive Health Ronald Walter Greene David Breshears 186

9 Disciplining the Ethnic Body: Latinidad, Hybridized Bodies, and Transnational Identity Angharad N. Valdivia Isabel Molina 206

IV Science, Nature and Gender

10 "Doing What Comes Naturally?" Negotiating Normality in Accounts of IVF-Failure Karen Throsby 233

11 Feminism's Sex Wars and the Limits of Governmentality Barbara Mennel 253

12 Beyond XX and XY: Living Genomic Sex Ingrid Holme 271

Contributors 295

Index 299

Editorial Reviews

"This volume is an exciting exploration … [it] draws together a suitably diverse range of case studies to critically highlight the variety of ways in which gender and the female body are constituted as objects of knowledge and are also subject to government through discourses and practices related to health care … It demands that the gendered nature of power becomes subject to renewed critical scrutiny." — Foucault Studies

"This book brings together an important range of contemporary topics and examines an understanding of women's bodies, governmentality, and power through different social processes and concepts with relevant examples … One of the strongest aspects of this book is its demonstration that women's bodies are subject to powerful discourses within the theaters of health and medicine in institutional settings as well as in everyday life." — H-Net Reviews (H-Histsex)

"The essays in this collection argue for a richer understanding of personal choice and clearly point to the ways women's choices and understandings of body and 'self' are mitigated by social forces. This is an important work for scholars of women's studies and science and technology studies." — April Herndon, Winona State University

From the Publisher